FOSE: A Penguin's Report from the Capital

Assistant Editor Jason Schumaker reports on the IT gathering for Washington, D.C.'s government geeks. FOSE (pronounce the "E", please) is a trade show dedicated to informing government IT professionals. The 24th annual event took place April 18-20 at the Convention Center in Washington, DC. Tim Bogart invited me to attend the event--to cover the "Linux invasion".

Tim is a member of the Northern Virginia
Linux User's Group (NOVALUG), and played a key role along with
Billy Ball in bringing the first Linux Pavilion to FOSE. He
convinced the show coordinators to award NOVALUG a complimentary
booth and that Linux was worthy of pavilion space. While the
pavilion was small compared to the small cities put together by
Microsoft, Apple and IBM, the fact that Linux was there, it was
visible and so many volunteers donated their time to simply chat
Linux, is what really matters. Linux enjoys high visibility at most
tradeshows, but in this case it was long overdue and gave the feel
of the early days, when Linux wasn't well represented. The folks
from NOVALUG are trying to change this, quite frankly, because too
much money is involved.

As Tim put it, "I know COMDEX is really important to a lot of
people, but FOSE is important to less people, who are responsible
for spending a lot more money." The federal government, the largest
computer-related customer in the world, spends some $35 billion
each year on hardware, software, support and so on. And, according
to numbers from FOSE, "spending by the federal government on IT
security is expected to reach almost $1 billion by 2005." The
question to answer: where does Linux come into play? Currently, the
Federal government is Microsoft's most lucrative customer. We all
know how much the Fed likes to overspend. Who can forget the $500
hammer, or how a certain president paid hundreds of dollars for
haircuts while aboard Air Force One? This want/need to overspend
certainly isn't helping Linux any, as perceptions of
free/open-source software are still negative in many IT minds.
Still, having a Linux Pavilion at FOSE is a start, and hopefully
more and more government IT professionals will begin to pitch Linux
to their bosses.

I talked with Dan Kusnetzky of IDC, and his numbers show
"about 4.1% of Linux server software goes to government users in
the US." He did point out that these numbers do not reflect free
downloads. Dan explained that "Linux is found running three basic
types of workloads: web infrastructure, high performance technical
computing and digital content creation. The government usage
usually falls into the second category." So the "4.1%" number could
be much higher, but even if it were double or at 10%, there is much
room for expansion. It is up to the members of the Linux community
to show the feds just what Linux can do.

Their were a number of Linux-related companies attempting to
do just that at FOSE. Inside the Linux Pavilion were Applixware,
Caldera, BarCharts,
Axonet, Inc., and
HorizonLive.
Outside the pavilion, Corel held a formidable spot, an aisle or two
down from Microsoft. They were touting Corel LinuxOS and
WordPerfect for Linux. There were presentations throughout the day,
showing various uses of Corel's offerings (including the Microsoft
stuff). I caught a few minutes of the WordPerfect for Linux
demonstration and found it informative. I talked to an unnameable
employee of the Department of Justice, who was "checking out
WordPerfect, because I expect to be using it at work soon." (It's
funny how so many of the people I talked to from various government
agencies refused to give their names, or reveal the exact
department in which they worked.) This person, who we will call
"Mr. Mysterious", was referring to a deal in January between Corel
and the Department of Justice. The DOJ has licensed some 55,000
seats of Corel WordPerfect software. Mr. Mysterious said, "I think
it will be good to learn something new." When asked how others in
his department felt about the upcoming switch, he replied, "I'm not
too sure. Overall, it seems like most people are dreading it, since
training is involved."

Mr. Mysterious has a point, in that much of what keeps Linux
out of Microsoft-dominated companies is fear of change, or
inadequacy. This is a problem with perception. Specifically, many
don't believe that Linux has enough in the way of applications.
While this might be true to an extent, there are many applications
available that these people probably don't know about yet. The
general reaction from people at the Corel booth was of surprise:
both that Linux "looked so much like Windows" and that "Linux seems
so easy to use" (as I overheard a few people saying). I didn't make
it to the TerraSoft Solutions booth, but read on
Slashdot
that Kai Staats was demonstrating Yellow Dog Linux 1.2 on the G4.
Timothy writes, "After one of these demonstrations, NIST robotics
researcher David Gilsinn told me, "My scientific work, it's on
UNIX, so I have to either run X or go sit at a UNIX box to do it,
so that [Linux on G4] looked like a really good option."

Another area of concern, mentioned a number of times, was
Linux development. Emily Pins, who was courageous enough to give
her name (but not her department, sheesh!) works for the Feds and
said it best. "Linux has little in the way of standardization, and
people don't know how to use it. I use Linux at home, but expecting
all 300 people in my department to re-train, is asking too much."
Linux is developing so quickly that the necessity of training users
will be an integral part of using Linux. Training costs money.
While the use of Linux will save much in licensing fees, trying to
convince government people to pay for training (and be trained
themselves) is more difficult. The bottom line is that Linux
companies need to differentiate themselves from other software;
show the benefits of switching from NT to Linux, for example. I
don't know whether cost will be a good enough reason. Since when
has saving money been the highest priority for the federal
government?

Others I talked to throughout my brief two days at FOSE
brought up a variation on "is Linux really able to handle our
needs?" Unfortunately, I was not the *best* person to answer some
of the more technical questions, but I tried to point these folks
in the right direction. That's what the Linux vendors and area LUG
members were there to do. On April 19th, the NOVALUG folks put
together a panel discussion called "Linux Solutions." Please read
the summary of this event,
submitted by NOVALUG reporter Karl Pena. The participants were
Chris Dibona (VA Linux), Paul McNamara (Red Hat), Billy Ball (Linux
author), Jan Silverman (SGI) and Renee Schmidt (Corel).

So, the show was a success, and the work of the NOVALUG
people should be applauded. Tim Bogart fully intends to work toward
making the Linux Pavilion bigger than Microsoft's (I wonder if they
will have two pavilions after the break-up: one for Windows, one
for the Internet?) for next year's FOSE tradeshow. Okay, that might
be an exaggeration, but it will be bigger. As Tim said, "I'm not
done yet. Not by a long shot." You go, guy!

Jason Schumaker is assistant editor at Linux Journal. He can
be reached at jason@ssc.com.

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